Just prior to the Civil War, nearly half of the Black population living in Maryland was free, and many responded to restrictions on their liberties by working to become even more financially independent. Thomas Waterman Wood began to depict this community after an 1856 visit to Baltimore. At the time, the city was home to about 25,000 free Black people, the greatest number in the North or the South.

It is not known whether Market Woman depicts a free woman buying or selling her own vegetables or an enslaved woman shopping for a white family. In their sensitive portrayals of individuals’ transitions from enslavement to freedom, Wood’s portraits differ from the work of many contemporaneous white artists, who typically depicted Black people as exotic or as caricatures.